NWC News Desk

Community invited to learn Shelby's Rules about alcohol poisoning Wednesday, April 18

Posted April 5, 2012

By NWC News Desk

POWELL, Wyo. - Northwest College invites Big Horn Basin parents and teenagers to “Shelby’s Rules,” an alcohol poisoning education program at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, in Room 70 of the Fagerberg Building.

The program is presented by Debbie Allen. After losing her 17-year-old daughter Shelby to alcohol poisoning in 2008, Allen created the Shelby’s Rules educational foundation to inform students and parents of the little-known danger of death caused by alcohol poisoning. She focuses on the very short amount of time and surprisingly small amount of alcohol it takes to induce a lethal effect.

Allen travels the United States presenting her one-hour interactive program at schools and parent forums. She describes in detail what happened to her daughter the night she died. She stresses that most students and parents don’t realize the danger of alcohol poisoning has increased over the last several years due to popularity of drinking games and other changes in alcohol experimentation by underage drinkers.

The program starts with a five-minute video that features what Allen calls “gut-wrenching text and pictures” from Shelby’s cell phone the night she died.

Setting her presentation apart from most drug and alcohol programs, Allen illustrates in a hands-on manner the danger of alcohol poisoning, while addressing the causes, symptoms, treatment and myths that can lead to death, such as letting an unconscious person “sleep it off.”

Allen received the Citizen Advocate of the Year award in 2010 from the Consumer Attorneys Association of California for her tireless work in alcohol education and was nominated as one of 20 citizens to receive the national Congressional Medal of Honor Foundation’s 2011 Citizen Service Before Self honor.

Allen’s presentation in Powell is sponsored by the BASICS program in the Northwest College Counseling Office, Fremont Motor in Powell LLC and Groathouse Construction.